First Foods

Beth - posted on 06/06/2009
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My 6 month old boy has been doing very well eating solids (even loves his veggies!) but we're having trouble with food coming out of his nose. He has a bilateral cleft lip and palate, one side of the cleft was complete and the other incomplete. We've had one lip surgery so far and will finish working on his lip in August. The palate repair is set for next spring. We've been having to suction snot/food very often (which he hates) and we're hoping that this sort of thing won't lead to some kind of sinus infection or something. I mean it can't be good to have food in your sinuses. Any thoughts? Thanks!

This is a very common problem. My daughter has a very wide bilateral cleft lip and a unilateral cleft pallet. She always has food coming out of her nose. She has never had a problem with her sinuses though. We suctioned her nose a lot after her first surgery, but after her second it made her little nose so flat that you couldn't suction it. We actually had to stop giving her stage 1 or 2 food because she didn't like it coming out of her nose. She has less problem with the stage 3 and table food. Now even table food will get stuck up there though. The grosses thing was when she sneezed a big piece of french fry out of her nose that had been up there over 24 hours. I felt really bad because I didn't realize it was up there, but it also showed me that every thing will work its way out some how.

My daughter is 6 months old as well and has cleft palate soft and a little hard. I had problems feeding her stage 1 baby food as it would come back through her nose a lot. I noticed she eats the chunkier foods much better and enjoys eating it more. I read somewhere to avoid citrus fruits because it can irritate their nose. I too am interested if there are other foods we should avoid.

Completely normal! My son was born with a very wide unilateral complete cleft lip/palate.. & he ate a lot of peas.. I would bring him places & he would still be sneezing green peas out of his nose ; ) Someone once commented that I needed to wipe his snot nose. He never had any problems from the food up there. It is great that your son loves his veggies ; )